To Say
by scruffyreader7
Summary: To say Kara Thrace knew Sam Anders before the end of the worlds was an understatement. But how would a pre-mini Sam/Kara friendship affect Kara and Lee? And her rescue attempt? Definitely Kara/Lee. Goes AU after Home Part 2.


**Title**: To Say

**Author**: Scruffyreader7

**Word** **Count**:

**Character** **Pairing**: Kara / Lee, references to Kara / Zak

**Rating**: T for language

**Spoilers**: Spoilers for Season 1 and 2 through Home Part 1, when it goes AU. After that, generalized spoilers for the series.

**Summary**: To say Kara Thrace knew Sam Anders before the end of the worlds was an understatement. But how would a pre-mini Sam/Kara friendship affect Kara and Lee? And the rescue attempt?

**Author's** **Note**: Yes, I know it looks like it's going to be Sam / Kara. Its not. Bear with me: this began at 2 in the morning with a crazy idea.

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><p>To Say<p>

Part 1: Before the Fall

To say Kara Thrace (for she had been just Kara Thrace then) knew Samuel T. Anders and his cocky attitude before the end of the worlds was an understatement. She had gone to high school with him—Anders and Thrace, Anders and Thrace, that was the cheer before Pyramid games. It was the due before Starbuck and Apollo, incredibly less intense, of course, but a pair. He was her first visitor in the hospital when she busted her knee in the University Semifinal.

"Kara, I—" She could see the guilt on his face, hear it in his voice. It didn't matter.

"S'not your fault. _I'm_ the frak up, Sam."

He had to laugh at that. Kata Thrace, frak up?"

Never. She might frak around, not turn in assignments, sleep over at other people's houses more than was proper, but that was who she was.

"No, really. I'm a frak up." Her eyes fell to her bow-broken knee, then up her other, un-bandaged, un-frakked-up leg.

"You're not a frak-up. And you're not a screw-up either." He didn't know or care the linguistic differences between the two, but he was sure if he successfully denied one she'd claim the other.

"You thinking of being a lawyer, Sammy? Because the evidence is not on your side here." She reached out and grabbed the kiddie, purple-and-robins-egg-blue Pyramid ball from his hands. It had been signed by all the members of the C-bucks from two years before. Stupid really, Sam Anders thought in hindsight. Reminding Kara of what she could've had. Scouts were coming in less than a week for the big game, and the Thrace of Anders and Thrace was laid up with her bum knee in the air.

"You wanna know why I'm such a frak-up, Sammy?"

Not because she'd been so high on their sure victory that she'd forgotten to give him their signal to switch tactics. Not because the star players of Pikkon City Regional High's Pyramid team had collided awkwardly on the edge of the court, and Anders had landed on Thrace's knee. Not because she'd gasped and wriggled at the sudden pain on top of the ache from a two-day-old bruise and worked her knee over until some half-trained nurse showed up and tried to get her to sit still. Not because of that.

Kara threw the pyramid ball up, let it bounce off the dip in her nose, then flicked it off and back into her hands. "Because all my life I've been nothing but a screw-up. Born to two frak-ups: Mother was a dropout pregnant petty-officer on Trident, deadbeat pianowhore of a father. I was born to two frakking screw-ups, you see, and social mobility is crap. I got born in frak-up-ville. Just wish it had a couple fewer doors and cigarettes."

Samuel T. Anders didn't see much of Kara Thrace after that.

"It was always pyramid or the military," she'd explained as to why she was leaving. "The fates dealt me out of pyramid, so I guess I'll fly. No, really," when he tried to apologize, "the fleet will be good. I'll get to fly and I don't have to pick out clothes everyday."

"Okay," he paused. "No dresses.'

She had laughed.

Then she left. He told her he thought she would look sexy in uniform; he just never got tot see it.

He thought about her plenty, before the end of the worlds—before championship games, mostly, or when he pulled off a play they had favored. he didn't much think about her after, except for occasionally blaming their ill-fated semi-final game as the reason Kara Thrace had not been training with them in the mountains and thus a factor in her death. But the end of the worlds was the end of the worlds, and most days he was on the move and most nights he didn't remember falling into bed or spent the whole night keeping watch and he was too preoccupied with survivors to worry about the probably dead.

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><p><strong>Author's<strong> **note**: (me, again)

First BSG fanfiction! Well, that I'm posting. I broke my computer last month and lost about three years of unpublished work: thank god I'd copied this down into a journal. Finding it was such a wonderful thing I decided I'd post.

Please, please, drop me a line on this one (its not long yet, but no worries, I'm not a minimalist by any means). What you think, where you think it should go…anything and everything, people. I'm an email junkie, so click the frakking button, dears, and say what you thought.


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